Major League Baseball Rolling Out Thousands of iBeacons for Opening Day

Next week, Major League Baseball will begin rolling out thousands of iBeacons in ballparks around the country according to a source familiar with the plans who shared them with MacRumors.

The league is looking to have twenty parks outfitted with roughly 100 iBeacons each by Opening Day at the end of March. Boston, Milwaukee, San Diego, LA Dodgers, and San Francisco are among the teams that will have iBeacons installed.

The iBeacon deployment is one of the largest rollouts in the world, aside from Apple Retail's 254-store effort. MLB will be using iBeacons sourced from Qualcomm.

The iBeacons will work with primarily with MLB's At The Ballpark app, demonstrated at Citi Field last fall. The app should be updated by Opening Day with iBeacon support.

Functionality will vary by ballpark, with individual teams having significant input and control over what users will see. There are a number of potential use cases including point of interest information, concessions, loyalty and rewards programs, shopping, and more. Specific scenarios have yet to be determined for each ballpark and teams will share more information as it gets closer to Opening Day.

Separately, the NFL is rolling out a limited number of iBeacons at MetLife Stadium, the Super Bowl venue for this year, and in Times Square. The beacons will mostly be used to help users get to entry gates and to find Super Bowl-related tourist attractions in the area.

At The Ballpark already includes extensive ticketing functions introduced last year. Ticketing is fully integrated in the app and users can see all tickets they own, a significant perk for season ticket holders. Tickets can also be transferred from user to user, allowing ticket holders to send unused tickets to friends and family. With iBeacon, the app will be able to offer ticket holders precise directions to the appropriate gate and to their seats. Users can work end-to-end within the app: buying tickets, showing them at the gate, and then using the app to find their seats.

The main purpose of the iBeacons, according to our source, is to improve the fan experience -- not make money. The league is taking a "longer range view" and iBeacon isn't designed to drive revenue in a direct sense. "Time is more valuable than money", so MLB wants to make the fan experience "as efficient as possible". It is looking to eliminate time wasters like waiting in line at the will call window, and it doesn't want fans wandering the ballpark looking for their seats.

However, there is a significant revenue opportunity to be found. iBeacons allow fans to signal their intent, whether it's browsing for merchandise, looking for food or something else. It allows ball clubs to be more proactive at fulfilling fan needs and "it's better for you as a fan". At The Ballpark already includes a loyalty and rewards component, but with iBeacons, clubs could proactively send a push notification to fans thanking them for their tenth visit to the ballpark and directing them to a nearby concession stand for a free hot dog.

The precision of the iBeacon's location determining ability varies depending on both use case and subsequent placement of the iBeacon hardware. Determining installation locations for iBeacons within a major league ballpark is a major undertaking. If installed properly, the app will be able to determine things like whether users are physically in a store versus looking in the window, or if they need to move to a different row in a particular section.

MLB is also working to bring reliable Wi-Fi to all thirty ballparks, as well as working with all major carriers to improve cellular reception inside the facilities. Currently, many fans have difficulties using data or making calls, particularly during particularly exciting moments in the game. iBeacons can currently trigger any content -- videos, photos, text -- that are preloaded in the app, but for optional items like video clips triggered by plaques at Monument Park in Yankee Stadium, having reliable Wi-Fi would be a significant improvement to the fan experience.

The Bluetooth LE protocol used by the iBeacons is not subject to connectivity conditions, so users should be able to get directions to their seats or other content already stored within the app regardless of the status of their cellular connection.

Fans looking to get started with MLB iBeacons should download free At The Ballpark app to their iPhone and then sign up for a free MLB.com account to get started. Users need to install At The Ballpark and specifically opt-in to receive messages from iBeacons, preventing unwanted notifications. [Direct Link]

Those new features sound promising, but as a Nationals season ticket holder, I've never seen any integration of my tickets with the MLB At The Ballpark app. Maybe some of those features work at other ballparks, but last season my tickets were loaded onto an RFID-based card that I used for entry to games.

And from my experiences at Nationals Park and other ballparks, they have a long, long way to go in regard to improved cellular and WiFi access. Cellular service was practically nonexistent at heavily-attended games at Nats Park, and the WiFi has always been useless.

Only if they don't have an Android app and choose not add the functionality to let the app work with the iBeacon devices. The biggest hold up for Android-based devices is that relatively few of them come with BT 4.0.

IOW, these iBeacon-compatible devices they are deploying are not using any proprietary technologies that Apple has control over. It's the standard bluetooth protocol for BLE-capable devices.

iBeacon is so far only Apple's branding but they could potentially add other technological features that could take the branding down a proprietary path.

I'm not as excited about iBeacon at Dodger Stadium as I am about the team's chances this season.

I'm more curious, really, as to whether this actually "adds to the fan experience" or will result in more people gazing at their phones instead of watching the game -- something I already find annoying. The fact that the wifi and cellular coverage at the stadium still stinks after the supposed upgrades last year is actually fine with me.

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*The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between.

Only if they don't have an Android app and choose not add the functionality to let the app work with the iBeacon devices. The biggest hold up for Android-based devices is that relatively few of them come with BT 4.0.

IOW, these iBeacon-compatible devices they are deploying are not using any proprietary technologies that Apple has control over. It's the standard bluetooth protocol for BLE-capable devices.

iBeacon is so far only Apple's branding but they could potentially add other technological features that could take the branding down a proprietary path.

Exactly. And it's not a terrible thing to have something Android users associate with an amazing experience having the Apple 'i' attached to it. iBeacon makes Apple look like geniuses (they are) after all the crap they got about not implementing NFC each iteration.

I'm not as excited about iBeacon at Dodger Stadium as I am about the team's chances this season.

I'm more curious, really, as to whether this actually "adds to the fan experience" or will result in more people gazing at their phones instead of watching the game -- something I already find annoying. The fact that the wifi and cellular coverage at the stadium still stinks after the supposed upgrades last year is actually fine with me.

At Dodger Stadium, or the Apple Store, or anywhere else, I don't really see iBeacon being used for anything other than spurious advertising that I don't really want to deal with while I'm trying to enjoy the game. So, I'll probably be disabling this unless they come up with something super clever to convince me otherwise.

i used the passbook tickets last year to watch the Mets spank the Nats on April 19th and wasn't impressed. took the machine like 20 seconds to read them while people with paper tickets were a lot faster

and the last thing i want is to keep bluetooth on all the time and watch my battery drain as it gets polled.

with the big signs everywhere it's not that hard to find your seats

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Quote:

Originally Posted by IJ Reilly

Another Dodgers season ticket holder (share). Where are your seats?

I'm not as excited about iBeacon at Dodger Stadium as I am about the team's chances this season.

I'm more curious, really, as to whether this actually "adds to the fan experience" or will result in more people gazing at their phones instead of watching the game -- something I already find annoying. The fact that the wifi and cellular coverage at the stadium still stinks after the supposed upgrades last year is actually fine with me.

that's nothing
when i saw the yanks last year, i swear half the people got out of their seats to walk around and shop in the store or sit in a club and watch the game on the TV's there

"loyalty and rewards programs" is the most interesting part for me. In the provided picture it knows that it is your first time at the stadium and offers a coupon. I use foursquare but sometimes forget to open it and never aware of any deals where I am. If this setup would auto detect and send a push notification then that would be nice.

At Dodger Stadium, or the Apple Store, or anywhere else, I don't really see iBeacon being used for anything other than spurious advertising that I don't really want to deal with while I'm trying to enjoy the game. So, I'll probably be disabling this unless they come up with something super clever to convince me otherwise.

I'm moving down from the Top Deck to the Infield Reserve this year.

Nice. Infield Reserve, Section 1 for us. I think this must our tenth year in that spot. I sure don't need help finding our seats anymore. Now, if they could help us get out of the parking lot faster after the game, that would be an innovation.

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*The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between.

Nice. Infield Reserve, Section 1 for us. I think this must our tenth year in that spot. I sure don't need help finding our seats anymore. Now, if they could help us get out of the parking lot faster after the game, that would be an innovation.

I've been using the Express, but last season a lot of other people starting using it too and now it takes forever. We've seriously considered finding an apartment near Elysian park just to be able to walk there.